


A Matching Set

by withcoffeespoons



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Demons, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Psychological Torture, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:41:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5037841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian is no stranger to demons. They've plagued his dreams since he was a small child.</p>
<p>He's grown quite skilled at maintaining his distance, at remaining impassive to their taunts, unappealing to their appetites.</p>
<p>This one is different. This one knows what it wants. And Dorian's not sure he can keep it from getting exactly what it came for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The Fade flirted like a whisper in Dorian’s ear. Demons and spirits played with perception as much as suggestion. At times, the difference was imperceptible between the Fade and reality, both blurring into one as though Dorian were rolled in a tapestry of both.

Words hissed at him in Common and Tevene, a blanket of obfuscation and a barrage of taunts all overlapping until nothing felt real anymore.

Until one voice rose above all the rest. The voice held no form, but its presence loomed over Dorian like a spectre.

“Oh, Dorian,” the voice demurred, the only touchstone he had in this endlessly shifting landscape. “Let me just look at you.”

“Look all you like,” said Dorian, his words unsteady, “but you’re mad if you think I’ll let you touch me.”

The voice chuckled, loud and deep, a sound that left Dorian gasping with some unsettling emotion. “Such a strong will in you,” it admired. The voice didn’t have a shape, but it somehow groped at Dorian’s body anyway, as though a pair of large hands had found his skin so enticing. “I’m going to enjoy breaking you.”

“Others have tried,” Dorian remarked, confidence welling inside him. “What makes you any different?”

That chuckle again.

“I see your heart, Pavus.”

Dorian laughed fully, rolling his eyes. “If I had a sovereign for every time I was told that.”

“You don’t need money, Dorian,” the voice promised, “you desire something more...savage.”

Dorian felt his mask of carefully maintained neutrality slip ever so slightly.

“Yes, that’s right, Dorian. You can’t hide here. You lie to everyone you know--tell me, is it truly easier?”

Dorian said nothing.

“What are you afraid of?”

His voice rough with emotion, Dorian managed, “Why don’t you bother someone who cares about your haranguing?”

“Ah, but I think I already _am_.” The voice, impossible though it was, seemed to smile cruelly. “You can’t convince me otherwise. I saw his face in your mind.”

“Suggestive phrasing,” Dorian argued brightly. “The right words could conjure anyone’s face.” He wasn’t sure why he was engaging this voice--this demon. He couldn’t help himself. The argument was like a game.

He could feel its cold smile. “Suggestive, indeed. The things you would let him do to you--the things you _want_ him to do.” The voice tutted in Dorian’s ear. “I’ve seen everything, and I’m _still_ impressed.”

Heat flashed behind his eyes. “You can take your lies and stick them--”

“Now now, Dorian.”

Damn that condescending voice. It was so much like--no. Best not go down that road.

“Oh, but let’s,” the demon purred, reading Dorian’s thoughts as easily as he’d said them out loud. “What would your dear father say if he knew you lusted after a big, brutish Qunari mercenary? What is it you find so attractive in him? Be honest--is it the heart of gold or the thighs of steel?” the demon derided, seduction dripping from its words.

Dorian trembled with an unspeakable rage. And under it, buried deep in hopes that the demon couldn’t find it, was fear.

“Ah, there it is,” the demon said. “As if you could hide anything from me, Dorian. Anything you know, I know.”

“Then you know there is nothing you can say that would permit you whatever it is you want from me.” His nervous swallow betrayed him.

“I know no such thing. And therefore neither do you. Oh, Dorian, I am not finished playing with you yet. And we are going to have so much fun, you and I.”

* * *

 

“You look like shit,” the Iron Bull said, still fastening the buckle of his harness. His brace clunked loudly as he descended the tavern stairs.

“As ever,” Dorian sighed, “the soul of tact.” He leaned heavily, exhausted, against the table, his name practically carved into the chair. Bull watched him with a smile that was almost habitual.

“What good is tact when it’s clear to everyone with at least one eye?” He leaned briefly against the bar, and with a nod, the cook slid a heaping plate his way. So much bacon was piled on the plate that Dorian wondered if somewhere a farmer was bereft his many nugs.

What did one call a group of nugs? A herd? A flock of nugs?

The Iron Bull carried it to Dorian’s table, settling into a chair with slightly more drama than even Dorian thought was necessary for a man of Bull’s size.

“How can you stand that smell?” Dorian asked, waving his hand theatrically. “Do you ever eat anything but meat and ale?”

The Iron Bull grinned. “Sometimes I like to mix it up and pack in some eggs and mead, too.”

“Disgusting,” Dorian drawled.

“I didn’t get to be this shape by eating rabbit food.”

“And what shape do you call that? Mountainous?”

Bull’s laughter was nearly loud enough to set off Dorian’s headache, his teeth grinding at the sudden volume. “As good as any,” he said, obviously pleased, despite Dorian’s intentions.

Dorian tried to roll his eyes, to be annoyed at the way his insults bounced off the Bull, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t get anything out of the repartee. He just didn’t have the energy to keep up with it this morning.

“And you’re drinking Antivan coffee,” Bull observed.

“Yes?”

“You’re usually a tea man.

“And now you’re an expert on what I have with my breakfast?” Dorian asked.

“Usually,” Bull said with a smirk. It was nauseating.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Dorian finally said, “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Lucky man.”

Dorian’s mouth quirked wryly in a momentary tick. “Sadly, no.”

Bull said nothing, just sat, patiently. Was he waiting, Dorian wondered, for him to say more? That sounded like the Qunari, giving him some Ben-Hassrath silent treatment torture.

“I had a...bad dream.”

Bull watched him, his eye narrowed, as though he expected demons to spout from Dorian’s mouth as he spoke.

“Nothing like--well. There was a demon, but its command over me seemed to lie in its irritating persistence rather than anything sinister.”

“Right,” Bull said. “Good.”

Dorian wanted to laugh. “It’s a little amusing, you know. The big bad Qunari mercenary is afraid of something I’ve seen _while asleep_ since I was a young boy.”

The Iron Bull’s teeth snapped at the last of his bacon. “This is why we’re scared shitless of you mages,” he said, shaking his head, a chuckle layered under his voice.

“I thought it was our sexual prowess,” Dorian said, flicking a flame from finger to finger.

“That too, Big Guy,” Iron Bull said, grinning. “That too.”


	2. Chapter 2

Dorian returned to his chambers that night with only the slightest apprehension. It was, after all, far from his first time encountering demons in the Fade, and an empty taunt wasn’t about to keep him from his sleep. Still, the memory of this particular creature’s taunts, its sly insinuations, dogged Dorian’s thoughts.

He didn’t see the demon again for another two weeks.

The creature’s breathing, illusion though it was, was irregular, as though it were overcome by some unsettled spasm of desire, the proverbial starving man presented with a feast.

“You don’t know what a gift you’ve given me,” said the demon.

Dorian scoffed. “Do show some restraint,” he said. “I can _hear_ you drooling.”

Though it still had no form, there was something about it that felt more viscerally present than last time. A chill took Dorian briefly as he realized--the demon had found a hold in him, however small.

“That’s right, Dorian,” the voice cooed. “I _like_ you. I think I’ll be sticking around for a while.”

“I think you’ll find yourself growing bored with me,” Dorian said, aiming for the same easy, flippant tone he’s always summoned for those who dwelled in the Fade. It had served him in the past, shrugging off desire demons and providing a layer between him and the chilling drag of despair. Sarcasm never let him down. “It’s all magical theory and idle boyhood fantasies in this mind, when you get right down to it.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Dorian.”

“Do I?”

“You think I’m here for myself.”

“Well aren’t you?” Dorian asked. “That’s all there is to you. Hunger and need--sustenance.” It was more complicated than that, Dorian knew, but demons were what made the worst of people, given form. They would take until there was nothing left. It was all they were capable of.

This being was no different from any other Dorian had encountered. The difference was that this demon, without a form, without a name, had taken a particular shine to the mage.

“You give me so much to play with,” the demon said. “And you don’t even know it, yet. Tell me, Dorian, do you remember where you are--in the waking world? In your precious reality?”

Dorian thought about it. The Fade warped memory and time. Seconds became hours, and personal truths were cast into shadowy deception. He knew who he was, knew he was with the Inquisitor, but the exact details were sketchy at best.

“Somewhere...dry,” Dorian muttered, unsettled by how inexact his own memories were. “I was complaining about the sand in my--my everything.” He balked, shamefaced when he realized how he so easily humored the creature’s whim.

“You remember,” taunted the demon. “I know because you know. Try harder,” it demanded.

Dorian swallowed against a thickness growing in his throat--fear, dread and uncertainty grasping at his thoughts. “Why are you playing these games?”

“Because it’s fun. And I like you.” Though he prided himself on his social affability, his universal charm, Dorian had never felt more contempt for such a sentiment. He rather believed the demon liked him the same way a wild dog liked meat. “You’re going to give me great things, Dorian. And we’re starting here.”

“I don’t have to give you anything. I can refuse to play altogether, you know.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Because you can’t resist a challenge. It’s in your breeding. You’ve always risen to the occasion.”

It should have frightened him, how the creature knew Dorian, how it was able to read him like he knew his own history.

Instead, a million questions sprang to mind--could it only read Dorian’s thoughts? Or could it flip through his life like the pages of a book? Was it capable of altering Dorian’s memories outside the Fade as well? There were dozens of curiosities he would never have another chance to satisfy.

The demon knew that, too, knew what was in Dorian’s will to resist--and what was not.

Perhaps it did frighten him, just not in the way Dorian believed it should.

“I’m--asleep in a tent. In the Hissing Wastes.” The ghost of the larger moon filled the void like a memory, just as it nearly filled the sky in the waking world.

“Very good, Dorian,” the demon purred. Dorian felt unclean, his own response to such praise clinging to him with the scent of shame. The hair on his arms stood on end, lashing out like an angry cat.

“What did you mean?” Dorian asked, his voice strained. “Before, when you spoke of this gift I’ve given you?” He shook his head. “It’s more than just me, my presence--it must be.”

“So clever. So good of you to ask the right question.”

“The right question,” he echoed, not quite an inquiry in itself.

“You smell good.”

“E-excuse me?”

“You smell like more--like want and hunger.” A lusty growl seemed to fill Dorian from his feet up, a sound not only heard, but felt. “You entered the Fade smelling like everything I could ask for.”

Realization stained Dorian’s face, shame and fear and anger warring within him.

Desire. The demon spoke of desire.

He’d fallen asleep hard, hidden in his trousers, beneath layers of blankets. Desirous thoughts had come unbidden, the air thick with masculine sweat, the exhaustion of travel wearing on his resistance like the sand that smoothed the face of the rocks that littered the desert.

He’d fallen asleep, a hard-on beneath his sheets, beside the Iron Bull, the two men forced to share a tent while the Inquisitor and Sera pitched on the other side of camp. Dorian had entered the Fade, chased by the shameful desires of his tired mind.

“This is what you want?” Dorian asked. “For a desire demon, you do beat around the bush.”

The demon tsk’d sharply. “Who said anything about desire demons?”

“Well--”

“I taste your shame, and I want more.”

* * *

Dorian woke gasping, sick to his stomach and twitching in his pants.

The Iron Bull slept, undisturbed, beside him. The tent still smelled like sweat and dust, and Dorian shivered hard into his bedroll. His skin was too tight, too close, his body right on the edge. His time in the Fade had done nothing to quell the desires that haunted his sleep.

It took nothing at all to relieve the ache, just a firm press of his palm, and he came with only a restless rustle of his woolen blanket.

He panted, a pungent reminder of his uncontrollable urges, the betrayal of his own thoughts, lingering in the close air. He buried his face in the crook of his arm, a heated blush from arousal and embarrassment spread across his cheeks.

Dorian cursed at himself. He wasn’t a teenager anymore; he should be well past the age of waking up so desperate, so wanton.

The demon was in his head, revealing truths Dorian would much rather stay buried. I taste your shame, it had said.

To that end, Dorian was a buffet.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dorian's experience at the end of this chapter prompted both a rise in rating from Teen to Mature, and an additional "Mildly Dubious Consent" tag.
> 
> I argue that because Dorian's desires are his own, unaffected (except, perhaps, intensified) by the demon's influence, there are no strong consent issues. However, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that this situation could be read otherwise, and while it is meant to be somewhat uncomfortable, it's not meant to be a trigger.


	3. Chapter 3

“Look alive, Tevinter!” Krem called.

Dorian rubbed at the back of his neck, bruised, no doubt, by now, by the wooden staff in the Iron Bull’s hands. He growled gently, swearing a string of Tevene that sent Krem into a rattle of laughter.

“This isn’t like you, Dorian,” the Iron Bull observed. “Your head’s not in the game.”

“My head’s not going to be attached to my shoulders if you keep hitting me like that.” The unfortunate truth was that Dorian was frustrated more with himself than with Bull and his damned stick.

When the Inquisitor had all but ordered Dorian and the Iron Bull to train together, Dorian had struggled to determine whether it was he or Bull who was being punished.

“Quite honestly,” she had said, “I don’t trust either one of you as far as I can throw you,” which was saying something, coming from a dwarf who whipped tiny daggers around for a living. “But,” Cadash had confided in him, “I get to train my most efficient—and, frankly, terrifying—warrior how to fight Tevinter mages, and you get put on a short leash? Win-win.”

When he told the Iron Bull what she had said, Bull’s laughter filled the Tavern. “Yeah, that sounds like Cadash all right.”

The Inquisitor’s concerns were laughably unfounded, but Dorian and Bull kept to their sparring routine. It kept them both sharp. Though Dorian was loathe to admit it to Inquisitor Cadash, they made stellar competition for one another.

Except for today.

“I didn’t hit you too hard, did I?” asks Bull, and for that one moment, his voice turned serious.

Dorian laughs weakly. “Good gracious, you actually sound concerned. It must be worse than I thought.”

Bull scoffed in Krem’s direction. At what point their sparring sessions turned into a spectator sport, Dorian wasn’t aware, but Aclassi knew to stay far enough out of it. “He’s fine,” he dismissed. “Still has that viper’s tongue.”

Dorian’s arm fell limp at his side, his staff swinging idly. He felt what little focus he’d been able to summon begin to fade completely.

Iron Bull pressed a large hand, spanning a greater part of his back, and led him away from their small audience—Krem and a smattering of Chargers whose names escaped Dorian. “Seriously, Dorian, you okay?”

Dorian looked at him incredulously. “I promise you, I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ve landed more blows today than I have since we started. By now, my pants should be on fire, and my fingers tingling from that storm thing you do.”

Dorian took a breath, meaning to roll into an explanation of the ambient magic and its transmutation into lightning—but the futility of the cause struck him before he could put words to his thoughts. How far gone was he, that he couldn’t summon the energy to argue?

“That, right there,” Bull observed.

“What?” asked Dorian, warily.

“You should have me bored halfway to tears with all your shop talk about magic.”

Dorian summoned a chuckle. “Maybe I just don’t want to waste my valuable breath.”

“From someone who likes to hear himself talk as much as you do?” Bull shook his head. “Nonsense.”

He stood, blocking the sun from Dorian’s eyes. As good as it felt not to squint, Dorian missed the aura of warmth.

“So I’ll ask again: Are you all right?”

Dorian hesitated, actually found himself thinking about his answer. After all, who did he have to confide in? As far as the people of Skyhold were concerned, he was the Tevinter spy. To the Inquisitor, he was the untrustworthy mage, a man whose intentions were at best unknown, and at worst traitorous. What was he doing, considering confessing his troubled sleep to a self-admitted Ben Hassrath spy?

“Bad dreams,” he said at last. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” the Iron Bull insisted. “This is one of those mage things, isn’t it? Demons and shit.”

Dorian swallowed nervously, tilting his chin upward, just this side of haughty. “Not everything is quite so cut and dry. Magic isn’t only about demons and fear.”

“No,” Bull agreed warmly, his voice pitched low. “It’s about _control_ , and losing it.”

Dorian couldn’t keep the flush from reaching his face.

Bull laughed, not unkindly. “Yeah, just like that.”

* * *

Dorian never ended up telling the Bull about his demon-filled dreams. He momentarily considered asking Solas for advice, but soon thought better of alarming someone with quite so much practical experience with the Fade.

The strange Fade child knew—Cole. He said nothing of it, but Dorian was sure of it. He could slip into anyone’s mind and take a peek at anything, be it floating near the surface or buried deep.

Dorian couldn’t understand what benefit Inquisitor Cadash saw in allowing him to stay when she treated anything to do with magic with such intense suspicion.

“I’ve seen what men do for lyrium,” Cadash told him one day, ankle-deep in the frigid mud left by the pillars of red lyrium in the Emprise, when his patience had worn so thin as to invite the question. “Whether it be templars of the Chantry or mages everywhere, dangle something that promises untold power, and they’ll fall to temptation every time.”

Dorian rather thought the assumption said more about Cadash than it did about mages or templars. Still, he supposed he could see how the thought brought her comfort; a creature of the Fade made flesh, uncorrupted by the mortal hearts with their desires and twisted visions.

Or their shame.

“Dorian,” Cole’s voice broached quietly.

Dorian tensed, preparing himself for the worst.

“You command the Fade,” Cole observed, not quite a question.

“All mages do.”

“Yes,” Cole agreed. “But you should not let the Fade command you.”

Nothing more was said on the subject, and apart from a lingering glare from Cadash, Dorian rather felt he’d gotten off easy. It wasn’t until he glanced over his shoulder that he felt the pressure of the Iron Bull’s stare, boring into him from behind.

Sick to his stomach, Dorian pushed down any reminder of Cole’s words.

* * *

The Inquisitor kept to herself that night. No one was quite sure if Cole even slept, but he was content to bundle by their campfire, muttering words or memories to the stones. Dorian was left, once more, with the Iron Bull, whose hulking form encompassed, by far, the lion’s share of the tent.

In truth, Dorian eyed his own bedroll as he might a rather unsettling snake. He couldn’t be sure tonight wouldn’t be the night it bit him. It had been days, but Cole’s warning—and that was what it was—lay fresh in his mind.

After Dorian had dressed for sleep, adding, rather than removing layers in the s, Bull’s meaty hand grabbed at his arm.

Dorian stalled in his grasp, anger and, though it was quiet, fear rising in his throat. “What do you think you—”

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.

“What’s it?” Dorian snapped.

“What Cole said. The Fade commanding you. It is demons and shit. That’s why you got all cagey.”

“It’s nothing I’ve not handled for most of my adult life,” Dorian insisted. “And while the timing could be better, I admit—”

The Iron Bull scoffed. “This is what’s wrong with you Vints. Your head is so far up your own ass you can’t see daylight anymore.”

A string of swears found itself on Dorian’s tongue.

“You think, oh, what’s one more demon? as you turn in, and then you’re eating my face off before dawn.”

“I don’t even know where to begin. I really don’t think abom—your concern is touching, you know.”

The Bull shrugged. “It’s my face. I’m already missing an eye. I’d like to keep the rest.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t handle one demon in the Fade,” Dorian insisted. He took a long breath. “What are you going to do? Turn me in? Tell the Inquisitor? Her templar pets?”

Bull was silent long enough that Dorian feared that yes, that would be the Iron Bull’s solution. Re-education of a kind—the sort that left Dorian as mindless as he was harmless.

“For now, I’ll just be sleeping with my eye open from here on out.”

“Perhaps it’s not too late to bunk up with the Inquisitor,” Dorian snapped, unsure why he was so defensive, why the suggestion left a bitter taste on the back of his tongue. Surely Bull’s response was favorable to the one in Dorian’s imagination.

“Someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” Bull said darkly. In another context, Dorian might find the suggestion appealing. Instead, it turned his stomach.

In an ironic twist, he slept dreamlessly. Somewhere, he felt the demon was taunting him.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is heavily inspired by [this horrifying post](http://crotchner.tumblr.com/post/131516115646/magister-dorian-pavus-receives-a-box-entitled-a) by crotchner on Tumblr (link contains plot spoilers for this fic).


End file.
